Hackers at an infamous annual Def Con gathering in Las Vegas on Friday got schooled in how to be online killers.

A rush to go digital with the process of registering deaths has made it simple for maliciously minded folks to have someone who is alive declared dead by the authorities.

As fierce competition leads to rapid innovation in the smartphone market, hackers have pounced on cracks in defenses of developments on devices at the heart of modern lifestyles, experts say.

Smartphones have become increasingly targets for cyber criminals as people cram the gadgets with troves of personal information and go on to use them for work.

A Thai man was jailed for 30 years on Friday for "insulting" the monarchy on Facebook, in one of the toughest known sentences passed under the junta-ruled kingdom's draconian lese majeste law.

Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 87, is protected by one of the world's strictest royal defamation rules under which anyone convicted of insulting the king, queen, heir or regent faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.

The online world is where it's at for teens looking to make friends.

A study released Thursday found more than half of US teens have met new friends through social networks or video game forums.

Facebook announced Wednesday it was launching live streaming video to allow actors, musicians and other celebrities a new way to connect with their fans.

"Starting today, public figures can share live video from Facebook Mentions, the app that makes it easy for athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers to talk with their fans and each other," Facebook product manager Vadim Lavrusik said in a blog post.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced an expanded parental leave policy for its U.S.-based employees, a day after a similar move by streaming television giant Netflix.

The tech giant said that from November 1, it would offer full pay for 12 weeks to new mothers and fathers, plus eight additional weeks of maternity disability, bringing the total for mothers to 20 weeks.

A software glitch that allows hackers to commandeer a Jeep Cherokee while on the move is just a glimpse of dangers on the road ahead for the Internet of Things.

The ability to seize data from and take control of once-dumb devices that are now deemed "smart" with wireless Internet connections was a hot topic at the premier Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas Wednesday.

The FBI is looking into the security of the private email server that Hillary Rodham Clinton used when she was secretary of state, The Washington Post reported.

The newspaper also said the FBI has asked Clinton lawyer David Kendall about the security of a thumb drive, containing copies of Clinton's emails, that Kendall possesses.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's approval ratings may be languishing below 30 percent, but on Twitter he's as popular as Pope Francis — or so it would seem.

The socialist South American leader regularly sets social media afire with support, with heavily trending anti-U.S. campaigns such #ObamaYankeeGoHome and #ObamaRepealTheExecutiveOrder, which denounced U.S. sanctions on members of Maduro's administration.

India has reversed a controversial order banning hundreds of porn websites, a government official said Wednesday, after accusations of heavy-handed censorship in the world's largest democracy.

On Saturday, telecommunication authorities had directed Internet service providers (ISPs) to block 857 websites on "morality and decency" grounds and to curb child pornography, the first of its crackdown on online pornography in the country.